When lawyers decide that all jobs in the USA are required to pay a 'living' wage, it will be time to leave. The legal debate over what a 'living' wage is will cause massive migraine headaches in all thinking people...that will not go away. New Zealand and Chili seem nice....

If the owner of a McDonalds is your Lord, pity on ya. Your statement could be a Stalin quote from right before he killed millions of kulacs (small farming businessmen) in Russia. He was a 'Maniac' also.

There is a difference between simplistic solutions and compassion. Wage 'reform,' a new and funny euphemism for increasing the government-mandated minimum wage, is in the first category.

Going from $7.25/hour to $10.10/hour is a 39% increase. Suppose your boss told that over the next several years they expect you to increase your productivity by 39% or you are going to be out of a job. Would you consider that compassionate?

There seem to be some who believe that people making the minimum wage are unfairly compensated, but lack the power to negotiate higher wages, so the government should do it for them. Suppose that is true. Instead of supporting politicians who use the minimum wage issue as a sound bite, there is a better way to help.

Start a business that employs minimum wage workers. If the minimum wage is below what it should be, such a business would be excessively profitable. You can split the extra profit with your workers by paying them higher wages, and still become rich.

Oh, I agree with your premise with you 100%, in a perfect world. It would be nice if the government was totally out of the regulation business altogether. I guess what bothers many people is the steady gap between the pay of the CEO and worker on the floor. This gap has been widening through the past decades. It is the CEO (and CFO) that can dictate what wages are to be paid to a greater degree than the apparent power an worker has when threatening to quit because of unhappiness with the wages. At 3% unemployment hardworking, enterprising workers can add wage pressure to the equation, but not at current levels.And trust me, I do not think raising the minimum wage will help much in narrowing the wage gap. My original comment simply stated that the determination of wages, at this point in our economy, is in the hands of the owners.